1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an intra-subject medical system which performs various medical practices including examination or treatment in a body cavity in a subject, a method of operating body-insertable apparatus, and an operative treatment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, in a field of endoscopes, a swallowed-type capsule endoscope has been introduced. In such a capsule endoscope, an imaging function and a radio communication function are provided. The capsule endoscope has a function for moving along with peristaltic movement in a body cavity in an internal organ such as the stomach and small intestine and sequentially taking images until it is naturally discharged from the human body, after swallowed by a patient though his or her mouth for the observation (examination).
As moving in the body cavity, data of images taken by the capsule endoscope in the human body is sequentially sent to outside by radio communication and stored in a memory provided in an external receiver. If the receiver including the radio communication function and memory function is carried by the patient, he or she may move freely even after swallowing the capsule endoscope and before discharging the capsule endoscope. After that, a doctor or a nurse may give a diagnosis by displaying the image of the internal organ based on the image data stored in the memory.
The above-described capsule endoscope is made in a small size and a limited power source is employed. Since the electricity consumption needs to be minimized, a system in which the on/off states of various functions in the capsule endoscope can be switched after the capsule endoscope is introduced into a subject is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent No. 2849131, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-261240, and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-73934. This turning on/off of each function is done by emitting a physical quantity such as a magnetic field from outside and detecting the physical quantity by a physical quantity detecting sensor provided in the capsule endoscope, as disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 9-143053 and Japanese Utility Model Application Laid-Open No. 57-187506.
However, there has been a problem that on/off states of the various functions can not be surely switched, since the physical quantity detecting sensor provided in the conventional capsule endoscope has directivity.
Further, there has been a problem that the physical quantity detecting sensor of a magnetism switch or the like cannot switch an on/off states of each function unless a physical quantity is kept being applied from outside of the subject so that it is difficult to maintain the on-state of the off-state securely.